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Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Printable Version

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Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - twofoe - 2012-07-26

I just now finished. I spent every day doing pretty much nothing but RTK, and now I'm done (well, I have ~500 reviews to do tomorrow, but no biggie). I can answer questions and explain my strategy, tomorrow, if you'd like. I just wanted to cash in my bragging rights before getting some much needed sleep.

Edit: Thanks for all the kind words! Here's a summary of a typical day of cramming:

* Wake up and record my dreams in my dream journal, replacing as many English words with their kanji equivalent as possible. (I'm currently improving my ability to lucid dream)
* Turn on the Japanese internet radio, or a podcast.
* Do my Anki reviews, adding whatever kanji I learned the previous day.
* Spend the rest of the day learning new kanji.
* When I need a break, I watch an episode or half-episode of Dragonball (no subs).

My learning method:

* I would look at the kanji on the website before peeking at the book, identifying as many primitives as I can (usually I could identify them all with no trouble).
* Skim the top 3 koohii comments to check if there's an error in the book.
* Compare the book's story with the top rated story. If neither appeal to me, then check the two runner's-up before creating my own story. The vast majority of my stories are borrowed.
* Make sure I have a good mental image of the story, and then write the kanji.
* Rinse and repeat until I'm at the end of the lesson, at which point I review that lesson's kanji in a copy Anki deck and continue to the next lesson.
* The next day, I un-suspend all the kanji I've learned the previous day from my main Anki deck and start reviewing.

Tips and tricks:

* Suspend any kanji you haven't learned yet. That way, you can review new kanji in random order without any of the later lessons' kanji sneaking in.
* Keep a second Anki deck, to do reviews of new kanji in throughout the day. If you review them in the book's order, then the answer is often given away, and if you wait until the next day to review, then you're likely to forget a lot.
* Think of ways to stay motivated. I'm in the process of covering a wall in kanji:

[Image: li17i.jpg]

Maybe I can cover all of that tacky baby blue eventually.

Random factoids

* The most kanji I learned in one day was 243.
* I originally planned to finish in 14 days, but I was tallying each completed day of study in my journal and it looked nicer as three correct 正's.
* You're all awesome. Thanks for the stories!

Update 8/11: It has been 16 days and I still have a retention rate of 92%.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Necrojesta - 2012-07-26

Damn you! I feel so useless now. I'll try to work hard! I promise.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - financialwar - 2012-07-26

I finished in 15 minutes, now I'm going to spend the next 2 years revising

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Necrojesta - 2012-07-26

financialwar Wrote:I finished in 15 minutes, now I'm going to spend the next 2 years revising
Good job, squirt, don't miss any daily reviews otherwise all hell will break loose.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - frony0 - 2012-07-26

You monster... Now I have the unquenchable urge to review the last 215 cards in one big go, and I might just...

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Rina - 2012-07-26

oh my god. I respect you so much. you are my hero.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - nadiatims - 2012-07-26

congratulationsございます。I now recommend you start learning actually japanese like a fiend. Don't worry about forgetting the kanji or you'll end up just stopping and starting RTK for a year like a lot of people it seems.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - financialwar - 2012-07-26

OP: I don't understand why you crammed 2000 kanjis in 15 days, are you doing it for a exam?

The goal is to turn the kanjis into long term memory, not short term memory.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - frony0 - 2012-07-26

financialwar Wrote:OP: I don't understand why you crammed 2000 kanjis in 15 days, are you doing it for a exam?

The goal is to turn the kanjis into long term memory, not short term memory.
If I could I would. So long as he keeps reviewing for a while, not only will he without a doubt commit every single one to long term memory, he'll also do it far faster than people like us who go (comparatively) slow and learn sparsely in small chunks.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - twofoe - 2012-07-26

financialwar Wrote:OP: I don't understand why you crammed 2000 kanjis in 15 days, are you doing it for a exam?

The goal is to turn the kanjis into long term memory, not short term memory.
What Frony0 said; the goal was not to dilly dally, and to learn the kanji as fast as possible so that I could (current goal) learn the Japanese language fast as possible. I have the time to commit to it, and the will, so I saw no reason to slow myself down. I currently have a fairly good grasp on all 2000 kanji, and I plan to keep that 把 and strengthen it with Anki reviews and manga reading.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Kirby115 - 2012-07-26

financialwar Wrote:OP: I don't understand why you crammed 2000 kanjis in 15 days, are you doing it for a exam?

The goal is to turn the kanjis into long term memory, not short term memory.
Well, I've been doing a method that in my opinion is "quick", but it's not necessarily foolproof. If you study a small amount of kanji (let's say 3) every half hour for 8 hours a day (either after you get off work til you go to bed or if you don't work, that's whenever you wake up until midday for you), you'll get 48 finished a day. That's only 43 days worth of kanji, or a little over a month.

Edit: The main advantage to this is avoiding burnout and avoiding memory loss when you go to do like 20-40 (whatever your number a day is) all at once and end up forgetting a few in that bunch nearly assuredly. I mean, even 10 at a time is probably to the point where that if you hit a hard bunch, most of the 10 could be forgotten, or if you're on a slightly hard bunch, you'll probably forget 1-3 of the 10 each time. Which is still bad enough considering if you go at the pace of like 3-6 at a time, you'll definitely remember each one and you can keep going at the next available timeslot.

The reason it's not foolproof is you might not feel like it on some half-hours, which is fine. As long as you do a lot of them, or even just 3 kanji a day on some days, you'll still finish rapidly without ever feeling like you crammed 20+ at a time and had to rush to remember them.

However, let's up the ante to 5 kanji every 20 minutes. That's 15 an hour. Or 120 a day. It would only take 17 days at such a rate. I'm sure if anyone had 8 free hours, they could easily go at this pace. For most working adults, it'd be on vacation time, but still, that's amazing and it's not difficult, really.

So I can see how if the OP was really doing RTK all day, he/she could definitely finish in 15 days, with prior experience or not. (Btw, 6 kanji every 20 minutes for 8 hours a day is the amount to finish in 15 days, but I'm trying to go for a slower, more comprehensive memory than to just quickly finish, although both are viable options).

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - egoplant - 2012-07-31

That is cool that you were able to do this. Just wondering, what are you learning Japanese for?

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - JapaneseRuleOf7 - 2012-07-31

That's an incredible feat. Much respect.

I'd be interested in hearing back from you in about 6 months, to see how you're progressing in the language. While having 2000+ English definitions of kanji is useful, the real trick is converting that into actual Japanese language ability. I'd love to hear about what you plan to do next, and how it unfolds.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - squarezebra - 2012-08-01

Call me a sceptic, but I'm gonna challenge your bragging rights and ask what you mean by "finished"?
You've read 2000 stories and added 2000 characters to Anki?
Or you have 90-100% retention rate on all 2000 kanji?
Or you're now done with all RTK and don't need to review any more...
Or you're now fluent in Japanese.... (tongue in cheek)

If you can stop reviewing the kanji, come back after 1 month and still recall 90% of the kanji, then I'll hold my hand up, congratulate you and say 'wow, it IS possible to finish RTK in 15 days' ...

Keep it up though ... that kind of commitment will see awesome results if you can sustain it ^^

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - shinsen - 2012-08-01

squarezebra Wrote:Call me a sceptic, but I'm gonna challenge your bragging rights and ask what you mean by "finished"?
I was wondering the same thing. It takes about a month for kanji to move from box 1 to box 4 if you never fail any (which isn't really humanly possible). "Finished" in this case probably means "made flashcards for my future RTK studies", lol. Don't want to be a party pooper though, spending 15 dedicated days on RTK is very commendable even if it's just adding cards.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Necrojesta - 2012-08-01

He probably learned them all to at most box 3 I guess. Most of them he'll probably have to restudy a bunch of times, it's actually easier to study them slower because then you have less of those cards that you keep forgetting from a long time ago interrupting your study of newer cards.

Edit: To be honest though, even if his retention is probably shaky, it's still quite a feat to get through so many so quickly. He seems motivated enough to review to a high retention rate and nail all the characters. So no doubt he said 'finished' in regards to learning them all whereas others would disagree and say you finish when you have all kanji in box 4 or whatever.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - frony0 - 2012-08-01

Both of you bear in mind he uses Anki, in which there is no such thing as "box 3". Also bear in mind Anki requires more reviews than the Leitner system, so finishing 2000 cards in such a short time is without doubt worth lauding, be his retention 100 or 0. 10 points for commitment, twofoe.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - squarezebra - 2012-08-01

You're missing my point. I'm calling shenanigans on this guys cliam to bragging rights for having finished RTK. No he hasn't... he's just begun! (begun incredibly still = just begun). Its a bit insulting because it devalues RTK and takes away the incredible achievements of people who actually did 'finish' RTK in 3 MONTHS or thereabouts.

I used to cram for my exams when I was at high school, and I could learn facts at an incredible rate and spit it out on an exam paper... a few days later I'd forgotten it all. If I'd 'finished' accumulating all that knowledge then I'd probably still remember most of it today, but i don't .. because I didn't keep it up; I didn't keep reviewing. And thats my point... he still has to review his decks on a daily basis like the rest of us did, so he has not finshed RTK, and he won't have until he has finished reviewing/SRSing/Anki-ing the kanji.

I've finished with RTK ... took me about 12 months (at which point I stopped SRSing), and I haven't done any more for about 2-3 years. The difference is, after a 2 year break from doing reps on RevTK I am confident I could waltz in and hit 90%+ on all the kanji. But there's people here who are a LOT smarter than I and have achieved the same results as me within 2-3 months or less; where is their 'congratulations' thread, because I think that is a real achievement.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Lightning - 2012-08-01

Congratulations!

squarezebra Wrote:You're missing my point. I'm calling shenanigans on this guys cliam to bragging rights for having finished RTK. No he hasn't... he's just begun! (begun incredibly still = just begun). Its a bit insulting because it devalues RTK and takes away the incredible achievements of people who actually did 'finish' RTK in 3 MONTHS or thereabouts.
If that's your definition of "finish" that's fine. My definition of "finish" for RTK is to study all the cards and add them to your SRS, which is what he did.

I don't understand why so many people hate on anyone finishing RTK fast. I know most of these "finished RTK in xx days" topics are just bragging attempts (I liked this one because of the nice picture though), but replying to them by saying things like "you didn't actually finish because you don't know them all" is just ridiculous.

I did RTK adding over 100/day on average a couple of years ago and it worked fine (no, I didn't make a topic about it). Sure my daily reviews were terrible for a while but I kept doing them while learning vocabulary and started suspending the cards I started using in actual vocabulary. After a while I just stopped reviewing altogether. And guess what? I don't know any of the stories or fictional keywords anymore because now I actually know all of the kanji through real vocabulary. I guess I didn't "finish" it either..

RTK != Japanese. The goal is to get through it and move on with actual Japanese. All of those stories and keywords you learn? They're just placeholders. RTK is great and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning Japanese if they're willing to do it at a decent pace because it really makes it easier to learn vocabulary afterwards. If you can do it fast, that's great! The reviews will literally hurt for a while, but it will get better! Until you start adding tons of vocabulary per day anyway haha.

Good luck with your studies Smile

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Necrojesta - 2012-08-01

Well this guy not only bragged but he did give some sound adivce and his methods making it more than that. Personally if I could finish it this fast, I would. Because after this I can get onto learning even more and getting further so I'm slightly envious he got through it so fast.

Personally I dislike the stories but like the order of the kanji and this website so I want to push through quickly. Majority of the time the stories people come out with just distract me from the kanji itself so hopefully I'll be done by around... 10th September?

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Isbilenper - 2012-08-01

Congratulations twofoe!

I don't think his/her retention will necessarily suffer from running through RtK at the pace he/she did as long as he/she still took time to learn all the kanjis properly the first time. While I personally took my sweet time with the first 1430 kanjis, I did rush through the last 770 kanjis in seven days and managed to make those cards "mature" in Anki while my overall retention rate for "young" cards stayed at about a 95% retention rate.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - shinsen - 2012-08-01

financialwar Wrote:I finished in 15 minutes, now I'm going to spend the next 2 years revising
⇧
That basically sums it up, lol.

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Ginmanm - 2012-08-04

Congratulations

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - Altaira - 2012-08-04

I hope your speedy mindset doesn't cross over into your love life!

Finished RTK 1 in 15 days - nooaia - 2012-08-04

Great! Congratulations!